The US has responded to the crisis by sending a carrier strike group to the Gulf, led by the George WH Bush aircraft carrier, as Iran warned against any intervention in Iraq.

Iraqi security forces had collapsed in face of the initial onslaught, with many abandoning their vehicles and weapons caches to the rebels

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Iraqi commanders said the army had started to push back Sunni rebels and that soldiers had recaptured two towns north of Baghdad.

Al Jazeera's Imran Khan, reporting from Baghdad, said there was heavy fighting between rebels and security forces in Tal Afar, a mainly Turkmen Shia town 60km west of Mosul, and in Diyala province, which borders Iran.

There were no confirmed figures on casualties, but Shia tribal militias had suffered heavy casualties in Diyala, Khan said.

Volunteers targeted

Attempts to subdue the uprising will be bolstered by a flood of civilian volunteers, encouraged by a call to arms by the country's leading Shia cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.

The government echoed the call, asking all military-aged males to sign up to fight the rebels.

A centre for new recruits in Khales, in central Iraq, was hit by mortar fire on Sunday, killing six people including three soldiers, the AFP news agency reported.

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